Do you have a phone?

shockym

shockym

New member
And use it?

That sounds pretty silly, but its a honest thing that people look for when wanting to call and check on services provided. Many hosts out there have no phone number or at least one they list for clients. For me, when looking at a company - any company mind you - if they don't have a phone, I keep going. :rolleyes2
 
Dilemma time. A lot of people prefer calling by phone but do I want to risk spending way too much time answering it? Do I want to pay for a separate line so that my family and friends can still talk to me? I don't think if you are operating solely on line that having a phone number is as important as it would be if you were a business in the regular world or a mix of the two.
 
Absolutely. Customers and potential customers need to know that if all else fails they can telephone. Email, help desks, and IM's are all great forms of communication, but nothing beats actually talking to someone.
 
That's true, but you can spend plenty of time talking to customers because they were not able to do this or that. Often the are things they could "google" and have nothing do do with custumer service for a "root server" like question on configuring an apache webserver.

If you do telephone support you will see, that there are many questions which are not directly support cases.

kind regards,
Daniel
 
That is when you tell them to put in a ticket. You never refer a customer to Google or tell them to Google something. Your there to assist them with there account.
 
Good thing you mentioned Google, which everybody (well, almost) loves, and doesn't really provide lots of support, not to mention phone. So, whether it's important or not, depends on the service and the audience. For me, phone would be a last resort kind of thing, at least with a hosting company. So, it's not really requied, because if I got to that point, I'm probably at the point where I'm considering changing hosts anyway.
 
I don't have a phone line that I use for support yet. I am currently saving up to get a toll-free phone line that clients can use because it can be very pricey for them if they live in Japan and I'm in Canada
 
Cost is a certainly a factor. Skype is a very good alternative to a phone number. It is free to send and receive voice with other Skype users. Additionally, call-out time can be purchased to make calls to land line or mobile numbers in many countries for pennies per minute.
 
24/7 Phone support is a must, a second line is not. Why not at the very least get a Pay-as-You-Go phone? You could have it with you anywhere and a professional business line is cheap nowadays. I spend more on coffee than I do our business line. Pay as you go would be a starter untill you need that iPhone or Blackberry down the road. Either way, it would be more personal than outsourced support.
 
I have a VOIP system setup and I can take my phone with a laptop and go anywhere that has a net connection and I am set. I keep one at the office for my desk there, one at my home office and then others in the company have the same setup. There is nothing like having a phone ring at 3am, but when it comes to business I would rather lose sleep helping a client that really needs it than have them go elsewhere.
 
shockym said:
... but when it comes to business I would rather lose sleep helping a client that really needs it than have them go elsewhere.
Click to expand...
I agree.

VOIP is so inexpensive and it can go anywhere in the world that has internet access, it would be hard to justify not having. 1-800 numbers can get a bit pricey, but so many people have cell phones now days with free long distance, it's only going to be important to a few. Of course, you can always call them back and their cost is minimal.
 
Are there really hosting "business" that dont have a phone number for clients to call ? Lack of a phone number always seems so amateurish and "kiddie-host" to me ...
 
Many don't provide an address or phone number in their domain's whois, much less on their site. One wonders why they would be so secretive.
 
I see tons of places that have fake whois, how many times have I ran across 555-1212 as a phone number is insane. And its true, I will not do business with someone that does not have a phone number - legit - and listed. Its not like I am going to call up and ask a stupid question, but when I have a legit one I want to know someone is there to answer my call.
 
Phone support can be tricky. We used to offer telephone support but quickly found that we were bombarded with phone calls, which killed our productivity, as such we removed phone support.

Thing is, a lot of customers don't like calling a support line and getting voice mail. However, I find this to be a great solution. It allows you to screen the calls and call the customer back if it's something that falls under your support guidelines.

A lot of customers want a phone number to call, but don't realize that, in all honesty, some of their questions have no relation to the support you offer, no relation to your services/products, and sometimes (as blunt as it sounds) are just stupid questions that could have been handled through email. What they also don't realize is that when you have to handle calls like that, you're not doing what you need to be doing to keep their service at a top level, because you've become far too busy answering the phone to answer questions like..."What FTP/email/etc program should I use?"
 
And all that is reason for companies to outsource phone support, and for it to be often restricted to level one issues. They just can't have a highly trained technician answering stuff like that.
 
Haven't got one. I also couldn't manage it. You can do it on your own to make some money, or run a real company for living. That last one is not for me ;)
 
I do understand that many people will try and abuse it (and even more, not intentional) but when I call up a place for a billing issue. I really want someone that is able to speak to me in English. I don't think I could ever offer my clients phone support outside of the country. And I am not trying to be rude here, but its very hard to find reliable support out of country that is fluent in English
 
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